Throughout our month of coverage for The Last of Us, the team at Naughty Dog has stressed the importance of subtlety and intensity both in the story and gameplay. Phil Kovats is the man responsible for setting that tone with the audio of the game. As the audio lead for The Last of Us, Phil plans on using audio not only to submerge players in the world but also to have a significant impact on how they engage the enemies of the game. Watch the video below to learn how Phil Kovats' work on everything from God of War 3 to Flow has prepared him to take advantage of the new sound propagation tech to make sure that the audio for The Last of Us leaves a lasting impression.

Mirroring the focused and subtle sound design for the game is the plan for the music. Watch the video below to learn about Naughty Dog's approach to music in The Last of Us, which Oscar-winning composer they have onboard, and to hear some of the music from the game.

Gaming is no stranger to post-apocalyptic worlds, but Naughty Dog wants to deliver something you’ve never seen before with The Last of Us. The game takes place in a world where a deadly fungal disease and widespread strife has wiped out most of humanity. As the years tick away, nature begins to reclaim the buildings, roads, and other man-made structures our race has erected to keep it at bay. Straying from the dull grays and browns of many games that follow a catastrophic event, Naughty Dog looks to real life ruin photography to capture the haunting beauty of a world reclaimed by the elements.

Naughty Dog has cited numerous pieces of literary and film inspiration for The Last of Us, but the most relevant to shaping the game’s physical world is arguably The World Without Us. Both the non-fiction book and documentary paint a picture of a future world where tree limbs burst through office buildings, vines ensnare the pavement, and huge structures crumble without human maintenance. While the imagery described in The World Without Us may seem fantastical, you don’t have to look further than the American Rust Belt for a glimpse into modern decay.

A style of photography focused on capturing this degradation has cropped up over the last few years. Naughty Dog has studied these impactful images of present day ruins to inspire the world of The Last Of Us. While the developer has not named any specific muse, I’ve found striking parallels between the decayed scenery of The Last of Us and The Ruins of Detroit, by photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Packard Motors Plant

Fort Shelby Hotel

Fisher Body 21 Plant

Ballroom, American Hotel

Donovan Building

Classroom, St Margaret Mary School

Naughty Dog isn’t content with simply popping main characters Joel and Ellie and some bad guys into these interesting environments. The developer is paying careful attention to the composition of every location to elicit different emotions from the player. For example, the lush greenery and open air of an overgrown highway may evoke a sense of calm. Conversely, the underpass of the same road may have support beams crossing at rigid angles and prominently feature the color red to instill fear and claustrophobia.

During The Last of Us demo we saw when visiting Naughty Dog, we were shown an attack made on Joel and Ellie by a band of desperate hunters. The color script below distills the locations featured in this assault down to their basic colors and geometry.

Color script from The Last of Us

Now that you’ve seen how much careful planning Naughty Dog is putting into the locations in The Last of Us, it’s your turn. Try applying what you learned from the concept art to the photos of real life ruins. Would the mellow colors and rectangular shapes of Fort Shelby Hotel make a player feel comfortable or tense? Is there an opportunity for an ambush among the green trees and open road in Packard Motors Plant? Take a moment to apply the lens of Naughty Dog’s game design to these photographs and perhaps you’ll notice something different. It only takes a little bit of imagination to see just how much potential Naughty Dog has to deliver an end of days world unseen in games.

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Last edited by KRA; 02-18-2012 at 01:50 AM.

Originally Posted by GribbleGrunger

I'm so bored with the conversations on this forum. They're so shallow and unrewarding.

Naughty Dog's Uncharted trilogy received plenty of praise for the natural performances from the actors and the all-encompassing method of capturing that performance. The same techniques are being applied to Naughty Dog's new IP, The Last of Us. By capturing both the motions and vocal performance of the actors, the characters in the game feel more unified and real. click the video below to learn more about the actors behind Joel and Ellie and to see their raw performances.

Naughty Dog has always been a studio about teamwork. Originally founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, the duo expertly guided the company until their departure in 2004, when they made room for Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra to take the helm and become co-presidents of the legendary studio. Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara sat down with the co-presidents to talk about their history, the studio's emphasis on storytelling, and what it has been like to hand the reins of a second team over to Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann for the Last of Us. Click the video below and let us know what you think in the comments.

anyway have ND change something in Ellie
to make her less like Page and more like the actress that is actually playing her?
not sure why but it kind of seems like that...

I don't know if the model changed, it probably has but I personally didn't notice it. And I likened her even more to Ellen Page now with the way she speaks. Story and presentation etc will do a great job of making me care but her being like Ellen Page is more of an incentive for me, as I think Ellen Page is awesome.